Thoughts on nature, meditation and cabin life

June 2009

June 28, 2009

One of the beauties of flowers is their ephemeral qualities. Most flowers bloom only a few days or a week at most. If you don’t catch them at a certain time, they’re gone. With all the moisture we’ve had this spring, this has been a banner year for flowers. One of my favorites is the wild iris (also known as purple flag), a more delicate and smaller version of our domesticated flower and one of the early blooming summer flowers. Whereas, in previous years, there may have been a patch here or there, two weeks ago I saw whole fields carpeted with wild iris (below). But this week already many of the iris are past their prime, the purple petals curling in on themselves, losing their luster as they slowly go to seed. Flowers are fragile things to begin with, easily stomped by animal hooves or unseeing humans, their petals so thin it seems a good wind can carry them off. And yet, despite their fragility and impermanence, many creatures depend on them for sustenance. At the cabin, hummingbirds buzz the skies all day and into the night, poking their long snouts into the purple lupine and bluebells. And butterflies and bees also feed on the golden wallflowers and yellow cinquefoil. At the cabin every week, I’m able to see clearly the cycles of life and death. In past years, I would hike a different trail each week and carry the memory of all the blooming flowers for weeks, long past when they would have died. But at the cabin I can see the changes as I return each week: the pasqueflowers that bloomed in May go to seed two weeks later (below), the columbine buds that appear one week in mid-June and next week are flowering (below). In two weeks, even the columbine will be a memory, although the great thing about living in Colorado is that flowers that bloom at lower altitudes in May appear at higher altitudes in July. After the lilacs die in Boulder in May, I can enjoy their smell and lushness in June in the mountain towns. After the columbines die in my yard, at 8500 feet, I’ll find them on my favorite hiking trails, at 9500 feet or above, in July and August. And so I stretch summer out as much as I can. Because, as the flowers go, so goes summer.

June 22, 2009

Since the year I’ve been going up to the cabin, only once, last winter, did I have a day where I didn’t have work to do. Although I always take a break and go for a walk around Meeker Park, it’s with the sense that my time is limited, that I need to get back to my laptop. But I’m in between jobs now so decided to do a whole day of meditation practice at the cabin. For me, that consisted of positioning my chair outside with the best views of Mount Meeker, surrounded by the aspen trees and out of the sun’s rays, and just sitting. Even after being at the cabin for a year, getting familiar with its moods in every season, to have a day where I did nothing but became acquainted with my mind and the place was a revelation. My only task was to become aware of everything around me—the soft, almost reverential sound of the wind through the aspen leaves and the louder, more ferocious one of the wind through the tops of the tall ponderosas; the cries of a dozen different birds, ranging from the sweetness of the house wren to the cawing of the blackbirds; the rushing of the creek, the smells of the pine trees; and the glow of greenish sunlight filtered through the aspen leaves. In there someplace was an awareness of my own breath, a sense of myself among all this beauty and richness. And when I did that, I opened myself to feeling what was right in front of me. So to say that I became aware of life all around me is only half the story. The other half is that I felt what the day was like, and that day was joyous and deep in sensual riches. It’s not easy to shut down all the thoughts that clamor for attention in my brain, but when I’ve done this before, the world around me suddenly comes into focus, and I suddenly realize what that moment feels like. Sometimes it’s sad, sometimes confusing, but most often the feelings can’t be put into words. It’s a strange sense, as if the world had been closed and now it’s open. Or as if I had been looking at the world through a pane of glass but then opened the door and stepped outside, so I became part of the world. I think it’s similar to what happens in childhood, when we feel everything, even when it is painful. Several years ago, I did oral histories with senior citizens, and their deepest memories were from childhood, remembering details like how a wild blackberry tasted. But, once into their 20s, it seemed life became a blur, and they dutifully recited their jobs, who they married, the names of their children, but the feelings were gone. As adults, we tune out those feelings, I think. We need to get down to business, make money, pay mortgages, take care of our children or aging parents. But, as I get older, I’m trying to recapture those feelings, stop myself during a busy day and let myself become aware of the day, what it feels like. And to have a whole day at the cabin where I allow myself to do nothing but experience everything seems like a great treasure.

June 18, 2009

When I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, my girlfriends and I loved to go exploring. We weren’t finding new countries or new cultures but things we didn’t expect: a small stream, a street we didn’t know existed, a field with horses. I’ve never lost that curiosity. Luckily for me, the neighborhood around the cabin is a wonderful place to explore because it’s a mix of cabins and the natural landscape, so there’s always something new around the corner—a small bridge across the creek leading to an old wooden cabin, an old wooden building probably once used as a garage but with no adjoining house around, or a waterfall that seems to be coming out of the rock face). All these places have stories to tell, although I’m just starting to learn them. When we bought the cabin last year, the sellers told us about a nearby waterfall and pond, and something about it sounded magical, fired my imagination. But their directions at the time didn’t make sense to me because I didn’t know the lay of the land. After I moved in, I would quiz different neighbors about it and get different directions. Finally, last fall, I decided to follow the creek behind the cabin and see where it took me, see what I would find. It was a great discovery, because I found the pond, found the waterfall (frozen last fall, see above) and a whole new landscape along the creek consisting of small forests of aspens. Tucked between the surrounding dry hills, the hidden, wet landscape was a surprise.

I have a walking route I take around the edge of the valley that gives me a good hour of up and down walking, something slightly aerobic. But last week at the cabin I felt more like sauntering, like seeing what was going on in the world and where my curiosity might take me. I walked down to the hill where the two creeks merge, saw the line of new aspen across the creek, flowers coming up in this thin, rocky soil, and walked back along one of the creeks, Tahosa, where the willow bushes (above) are still flowering. I followed the creek across the bridge and toward the pond, which I had last seen partially frozen in the winter. And then along the creek, through the aspen forest to the waterfall, now free of ice and scattering water widely over the rocks and down into the creek. In our purpose-driven lives, sometimes it’s nice to have no purpose, to amble where we want, smell what looks like it might be fragrant, follow the sound of a bird up high into the top of a ponderosa, or just follow our senses. You never know what you’ll find.

June 11, 2009

Although all winter I longed for spring, once it comes it’s still a surprise. Aside from a few snowfalls that magically changed the landscape, the winter landscape at my mountain cabin was often drab. Most of the wildlife was gone or hibernating, the creeks had little water in them, and, without snow, the earth seemed barren. I still loved the wildness, the winds that shook the cabin, the sky full of stars at night, but it was sometimes hard to be up there. Now suddenly, everything is alive again. The creeks are exploding from their banks, spilling out into the forests. Frogs are singing, while rabbits, chickarees, ground squirrels and chipmunks race across the yard. Birds, carrying bits of grass, look for good nesting holes, and the mountain bluebirds dazzle with their luminescent blue feathers. Hummingbirds have taken over the sky, chasing each other and showing off their aerobatic skills. The aspen trees at 8500 feet have just leafed out: miniature leaves of lime green, made more dramatic against the still snow-covered peaks (above). The first flowers (after the early spring pasqueflowers) are starting to dot the landscape: purple larkspur, yellow sulfur flowers, golden banner. The fields that were brown all winter now show a short green, nothing flashy but still stunning after looking at the brown, rocky soil for six months. Not only is the natural world coming to life, but a lot of the summer dwellers are returning. Last week I met a couple who had just arrived from Minnesota and were out picking wildflowers near their cabin. He has been coming here since 1960, when his aunt owned the cabin. And I saw neighbors who live here all winter but seldom stray from their homes when it’s cold and windy. Now they are out walking their dogs, catching up with everyone. On a road where I snowshoed last winter past cabins boarded up for until summer, I saw a cabin that showed signs of habitation: geranium and other flowers in planters. Even though all winter, huddled in the cabin, I imagined spring, there’s no way to recreate its exuberance but to be there. It’s so much more intense and all-encompassing than you can hold on to all winter. Just the smells of the forest after a good rain are enough to evoke feelings that lay dormant all these many months. There’s a feeling you get that life is friendlier, warmer; you can relax into it. I can feel my whole body responding. Now, bring summer on.

June 07, 2009

Last week I was at a concert where a young woman next to us text messaged for most of the night, while two women behind us talked through the band playing. I live in a world where 10 things are going on at the same time, where people need constant stimulus, and few can focus on one thing at a time. It’s a world where virtual reality has replaced literal reality, where more people would rather become immersed in the world on their computer than in the real world. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to places that are old, where time seems to stand still, where life seems more authentic and people had time to experience things slowly and one at a time. Two weeks ago, I was in a place called Old World Wisconsin (right), not far from Milwaukee, where historic buildings (in this case from the mid to late 1800s) were brought to a centralized location in the middle of woods and farms and recreated (or should I say, repurposed?) into a small village and farms of different ethnic groups. You can walk through the small church, past fields of horses and sheep, watch chickens being fed, go into a house where pork and potatoes are cooking on the stove. The homes are simply furnished, a few chairs in the parlor, one bed for four people in the bedroom, a few toys scattered on the floor. A kerosene lamp sits on a kitchen table, and wooden bowls are stacked on a windowsill (below). It’s the closest I’ll get to time traveling back to the 19th century. To walk through these settlements is to go back to a time when life was slower, less frenetic. Interruptions were few and entertainment almost nonexistent. You’d smell baking bread, see the trees and fields outside your window, hear the sound of cows or sheep bleating, maybe a horse going by. Days would be filled with sewing, milking cows, tending to your garden and fields of crops. The outside world would barely intrude, other than an occasional visitor who might bring word of wars or economic ruin in faraway places. In such a life, small things take on significance: a letter from a friend, the glory of a sunset, the return of robins in the spring. Something in me longs for that kind of simplicity and depth of feeling. That’s partly why I bought my cabin, to shut out the frenetic world and create a place where I could simplify my life and pare it down to its essentials. I know life had its hardships in rural Wisconsin in the 19th century: long, hard winters, women dying in childbirth, children dying from diseases we now control. But I would take a difficult life lived deeply and on a heartfelt level over today’s life that is easy but superficial, fast, and out of control.

June 03, 2009

A couple of weeks ago I was on a walk near my cabin, going through the woods when something bright blue on the ground caught my eye. It was a stellar’s jay laying unnaturally on its side, almost without a feather out of place. Because I was near the road, most likely it had been hit by a car. It’s the time of year when birds, busy building nests, courting females, or out of some exuberance that spring has returned, fly low over the roads, heedless of traffic. Many are hit by oncoming cars, and you can see their tangled bodies along the sides of highways and streets. At the cabin, the stellar’s jay, one of the most colorful birds of the mountains, is one of the few birds that doesn’t migrate when the snows come. All winter, the jays have kept me company in a landscape mostly empty of wildlife, except for the chickarees and chickadees. In the mornings, especially, I enjoyed watching the jays on the ground looking for food, bright glints of blue in an otherwise drab landscape. Their cries are raucous and demanding, and they can seem haughty and imperious. Although death has brought down this bird, it has not diminished its brilliance.

June 01, 2009

When I was in Scotland in April, my friend and I drove to a remote part of the Isle of Skye, one of the inner Hebrides islands. We were on a single-track road, sharing it with cattle and sheep, in a landscape of small farms. It seemed about as far from civilization as you could get. And yet, coming toward us (while I tried not to panic on this narrow lane) was a bus. Even on this remote, small island, there was an alternative to the car. (Note the lonely bus shelter below.)

According to people who keep track of such things, the British use half the amount of energy Americans do. It’s not hard to see why. Almost every decent-sized town in Great Britain has a train station, and more people travel by train than by car (as evidenced by the few gas stations we found). The trains are always full, and their cars are half the size of ours and get probably twice as much miles per gallon. The web site for Britain’s train system gives information about how much carbon emissions you are producing by taking the train compared to flying or driving. The British have an awareness about energy that you don’t find in the U.S. among the general population In Great Britain, we stayed in B&B’s, where every night the heat went off at 10 p.m. and came on again at 7 (our reward was big thick quilts, not those flimsy blankets you find in most U.S. motels and hotels). In two places we stayed, the electricity could only be activated by putting our hotel cards in a slot, which meant that, when we left, the electricity went off.

But it’s more than concern about global warming, conserving energy or even saving money. There’s a sense in Great Britain that you don’t take up more space or resources than you should. I remember once going to a restaurant and the hostess telling us we’d have to wait, even though several tables were available. But they were for three or more people, too big and extravagant for just two people. I admire that attitude of living within your means, an attitude that Americans are just starting to appreciate.

One of the things I love about my cabin is that it uses almost no energy and what it does it gets from a hydroelectric source (I’m on the Estes Park grid). My utility bill in summer is about $20, and that’s mostly for the compost toilet and refrigerator. In the winter, the bill goes up to $27, because I use electric heat, which is expensive.

Because I have no plumbing, I have no water expenses, except for the jugs of water I bring from my Boulder tap to the cabin. I read recently that 40 percent of our water usage goes to toilets. That’s a lot of water to flush something away so we don’t ever have to see it again. My compost toilet makes more sense than a flush toilet in that a heating element dries out and disintegrates the waste product, so no water is used.

Of course, my small use of energy at the cabin is balanced by my big suburban home in Boulder, even though I flush the toilet as little as possible and keep the thermostat at 62 in the winter. Still, I will keep aiming for that British sense of using as little as possible, of taking up as little space as possible.